The present inventors have developed several techniques for forming a polymeric compound, especially in an imagewise pattern, by making use of the high light-sensitive property of light-sensitive silver salts. One such technique is described in detail in Japanese Patent Publication No. 20741/72 (corresponding to U.S. Pat. No. 3,687,667), Japanese Patent Application (OPI) Nos. 138632/82 (corresponding to U.S. Ser. No. 687,481 filed on Feb. 18, 1982) and 121031/83 (corresponding to U.S. Ser. No. 457,602 filed on Jan. 13, 1983) (the term "OPI" as used herein refers to a "published unexamined Japanese patent application").
The basic idea disclosed in this publication was to treat an exposed silver halide photographic emulsion with an aqueous solution of a reducing agent in the presence of an addition polymerizable compound, and to use the resulting intermediate product of the reaction as a polymerization initiator.
In the above type of technique, selective formation of a polymeric compound in areas having a latent image is realized by simultaneously carrying out the wet development and polymerization reaction, and the development processing is required. In other words, processing under wet conditions has been indispensable to the above conventional techniques, and at least about 1 minute has been necessary for completion of the intended polymerization reaction.